Archaeology and Nationalism in The History of the Romanians

Niculescu, Gheorghe

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226450643.003.0005

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…10 The Getae are a Thracian tribe which once lived in the region of the lower Danube, known from ancient sources like Strabo (7.3.13) who described them as a people separate from the Dacians. Romanian historiography, however, tended to treat the two as one in the same, creating the united 'Geto-Dacian's' which provide the autochthonous connection to the national space (Niculescu 2004). known as "Daco-Roman continuity," which alleged the intermixing of Roman and Dacian and granted the Romanians the benefits of a less rigid identity, which nonetheless sustained their marginal European identity.…”

Section: The Formation Of Romanian National Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are an increasing number of local and international commentaries on Romanian archaeology, which highlight advances being made. Popa (2015) provides a detailed analysis on the relationship between the Late Iron Age and politics in Romania, building on the work of scholars like Kaiser (1995), Niculescu (2002Niculescu ( , 2004, Lockyear (2004), Dragoman (2009), and Enea (2012). Boia (2001) is the authority on the ideological construction of Romanian national history, an area in which Deletant (1991), Verdery (1991) Hitchins (1992, and Iordachi (2004) have also made significant contributions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Frontiers of Romania: Nationalism and the Ideological Space of the Roman Limes

Hanscam

2017

Ex Novo

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Modern Romania is a nation-state containing space which has long been considered marginal - first as part of the Roman Empire and now within the European Union. The national narrative of Romania highlights this liminality, focusing on the interactions between the Romans and the local Dacians on the northeastern border regions of the Empire. Romania still contains significant material remnants of the Iron Age, including the Roman Limes, a series of fortifications on the Danube River meant to protect the Roman borders. As such, the archaeological tradition of this geographic space is heavily entangled with Romania’s identity as a frontier region. This paper outlines the formation of Romanian national space, focusing on the period between the seventeenth century and 1918. It considers the relationship between the materiality of the Roman Limes and ideological frontiers in Romania, examining the role of archaeology in the sustainment of the Romanian nation space.

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Section: The Formation Of Romanian National Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontiers of Romania: Nationalism and the Ideological Space of the Roman Limes

Hanscam

2017

Ex Novo

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“…The search for distant ancestors may be exemplified by the related impact on education and cultural history presented to the general public in the Republic of Moldova, Romania and Ukraine. Non-academic writers in Romania promote the idea of Romanian ethnogenesis according to the following equation: Geto-Dacians + Romans = Romanians (Niculescu 2007;Popa 2013;. Ukrainian pseudoscientific narratives go even further, mainly to Chalcolithic/Eneolithic populations of the Cucuteni-Tripolye cultural complex, dated to 4900/4800-3000/2950 B.C.…”

Section: States and Archaeologies In Eastern Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Is archaeology still the project of nation states? An editorial comment

Brück¹,

Stutz²

2016

Arch. Dial.

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The European Association of Archaeologists has long fostered critical analysis of the relationship between archaeology and politics, particularly the politics of national, regional and supra-regional identities. Although the role of nationalism in the birth of archaeology as a discipline is well recognized, the events of the past few years – from the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, to the movement for secession in eastern Ukraine, and the rise of explicitly nationalist political movements across the continent – suggest that the (re)formulation of national identities is likely to continue to have major implications both for our interpretation of the past and for the practice of archaeology in the present. In light of this, the Archaeological dialogues editorial board organized a round table at the EAA meeting in Glasgow in September 2015 to explore the extent to which institutional, legislative and funding structures as well as political and cultural imperatives continue to bind our discipline into the construction of nationalist narratives, and this more or less in spite of long-standing critical debates within the discipline itself that for decades have problematized the relationship. Are we caught in a ‘can't-live-with-and-can't-live-without’ situation? While explicitly nationalist archaeologies have become almost obsolete in the European academies, we rarely contemplate the impact of nationalism on funding or the definition and protection of cultural heritage, for example. Several of the following papers suggest that without the nation state's involvement, the vicissitudes of global capitalism would result in a situation where it would be extremely difficult to adequately protect our ‘heritage’, however that is defined.

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“…A year later, in 1992, Dumitru Stăniloae—undoubtedly the most famous theologian of the Romanian Orthodox Church of the twentieth century—added to this rhetoric of ancestry, nationalism, and ethnicity by explaining that the Romanian nation has lived in the “middle space between West and East” and, in so doing, it “combined its Latin character and [Eastern] Orthodox Christianity” (Stăniloae, 1992: 22). Like Păcurariu, Stăniloae is not interested in explaining how the latinized and romanized Dacians—who most likely benefited from a Western, specifically Latin, form of Christianity—ended up being absorbed into Eastern Christianity, but in pushing the ancestry of Romanians well beyond the Dacians into the rather obscure history of the Thracians, a group of people who appear to include them (Niculescu, 2007: 153). Thus Stăniloae states that “our Latin character is not unacquainted with the ancientness of our Thracian being” and then he attempts to push the Latin character of Romanians further down in history by pointing out that, as ancestors of Romanians, the Dacians were related to the so-called Besi Thracians.…”

Section: Ecodomy As Nation Building: the Ethnic Genesis Of The Romanian Peoplementioning

confidence: 99%